


Four Times Things Didn’t Go Their Way, Plus One Time It Didn’t Matter

by ungoodpirate



Series: Pynch Week 2018 [2]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: 5 Times, M/M, Pynch Week 2018, Ronan-Typical Language, Weddings, pynchweek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-23
Updated: 2018-07-23
Packaged: 2019-06-15 02:06:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15402594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ungoodpirate/pseuds/ungoodpirate
Summary: "Adam Parrish had always gotten A’s in his math classes, but people weren’t numbers and proofs. They were fragile, tangled, and contradictory messes, himself included."-Late night cram studying, panic attacks, graffiti, self-doubts, and rainstorms... Sometimes things just don't go Adam and Ronan's way, but it's not so bad when someone is there whose got your back.-Day 2 for pynchweek18 - “It won’t be what you imagined, but it’ll be just as good.”





	Four Times Things Didn’t Go Their Way, Plus One Time It Didn’t Matter

1

 

“You know,” Parrish said. “If you actually put in a modicum of effort in throughout the school year you wouldn’t have to cram right before finals.”

Ronan looked up from where he was hunched over his textbook, sitting cross-legged on the floor of Monmouth to where Parrish was not looking at him back. Because he wasn’t looking, Ronan allowed his gaze to linger -- on his fingers’ death grip on his pen, of the slow blink of his nearly invisible eyelashes, of the the strange and interesting angles of his face, all the more strange and interesting since he had stolen Gansey’s car (Ronan thought he’d be the first to do that), made a deal with a magic forest, and committed self defense manslaughter of their Latin teacher. Ronan did not allow himself to think about the strange and squirming feeling this inspired in gut, other than that it was a disturbingly pleasant feeling. 

“You’re studying too, nerd,” he said after a delay that was probably too long to make sense.  

“Me studying is an insurance policy,” Parrish said. He flipped a page in the textbook he had balanced in his lap -- a different thickness than the one Ronan was currently taking a break from glaring at like he could intimidate it into imparting its knowledge straight into his head. “You studying is hanging onto the edge of a cliff by your fingernails.”

Or hanging onto living in Monmouth by his fingernails. 

Latin he could pass -- was passing. Brit Lit he could bullshit his way through as long as he could string his way through the essay section; the teacher couldn’t prove that he  _ hadn’t _ read any of the books. World Hist was just a bunch of facts to temporarily memorize and then promptly forget. Chemistry involved things that exploded, so he always paid half-attention to that course for the highlights.   

His real trouble would come with the book he was currently trying to decipher, because it might as well as been written in something other than English, Latin, or Cabeswater-language. He certainly didn’t understand what the hell he was looking at on the pages of his pre-calc book. 

“Do you need help?” Parrish asked from across the room. 

Ronan didn’t know what gave him away, but perhaps there was nuance on his emotional range of his expressions from frustrated to pissed-the-hell-off. 

Ronan’s gaze darted up at Parrish as fast as a poison dart. 

“Fuck you.”

“Fine,” Parrish replied, unaffected. For many of the students at Aglionby, Ronan Lynch was the scariest thing they had faced in their life. For Adam Parrish, Ronan was probably just a hiccup on his seismic meter. 

Ronan was pretty sure Parrish mere existence was a category four or five most of the time for him, ever since he had befriended Gansey and elbowed his way into Ronan’s life. Since moving out of his parent’s trailer Adam had been staying temporarily at Monmouth until he could sort out different living arrangements; Ronan wasn’t sure of his stay being temporary was a better or worse thing for Ronan’s sanity. 

He turned his gaze back to his textbook. It wasn’t even as if he was bad at math. Real math, that is. He was doing those word problems they were supposedly preparing you for years before they got to it in class: how many eggs per chicken, how many pounds of feed, the square footage of the fields…

Parrish sat up straight, rolled his his shoulders, and shut his book. 

“I could really use some help with pre-calc,” he announced. 

Ronan blinked at him, said nothing, kept watching Parrish in three-quarters profile. 

“Last semester, I tutored that Evans guy. Before he transfered.”

Parrish didn’t ask if Ronan remembered, probably assuming he didn’t. Ronan definitely did. That was a fourth job Parrish had put on his own plate. 

“Best math grades of my life,” Parrish said. “Turns out teaching someone is a really great way to study.”

Ronan’s eyebrows wrinkled downward. “Are you saying you want to teach me something, Parrish?” A second connentation flows into him a second after he says it, but Parrish remained unmoved where he sat, so Ronan kept blankly unmoved too. 

“I’m asking if you’ll help me study.”

A short staring contest ensued. If Parrish had blinked, had flushed, had cracked in any which way, Ronan would’ve had to refuse him. But Parrish allowing you to do him a favor was practically a favor in itself. 

“Sure, loser,” Ronan said. “I’ll help you study.” 

  
  


2

 

His watch beeped out a preset alarm and Adam lifted his head from his desktop. He blinked at the digital readout, forcing his eyes to focus. He had set the alarm for some reason. His mind just needed to catch up. 

Work. It was work. The alarm had been set to remind him that he had to leave for his night shift at the factory. But the alarm hadn’t been meant to awake him from sleep, but to awake him from concentrating on his homework. 

“Oh, shit,” he said. 

“Fuck, Parrish. Language.”

Adam snapped his head to the side. Ronan was lounged on top of Adam’s unmade bed. He had forgotten, in the grogginess of waking up, that Ronan was here. That he had arrived unannounced at Adam’s St. Agnes’ apartment, as he did now on some weird semi-regular schedule, while Adam was busy at work on his economics essay. He had just waved Ronan inside and told him if he wanted to say he needed to shut up because Adam needed to study. 

“Why did you let me fall asleep?” Adam said. 

“Let you?” Ronan countered. “They only way I could’ve kept you from falling the fuck asleep was propping your eyelids open with toothpicks.”

Adam ran his hands through his hair. It was already messy. He was incidentally making it messier. 

“I’m not even done half my essay.” But there was no time to distress on this now. He had a shift to get to. He stood and stripped his Aglionby sweater off over his head. Behind him, Ronan kicked the wall.

After gathering work clothes from his crates that served as storage, he went into the connected bathroom to change completely. It wasn’t modesty, but a habit inherited from his youth.  He might not have the same collection of ever-changing bruises anymore, but it was still in his inclination to hide them.

Stepping back in the bedroom, Ronan was now sitting up on the bed, watching him with a snake’s eyes. 

“Just lock up when you leave,” Adam said, passing him on the way to the door, because making Ronan move on anyone’s schedule but his own was a fool’s task. 

Almost out the door, he paused again, remembering a new hurdle. He groaned, feeling as if someone had just dumped a bucket of paint on him. “I left my bike at Monmouth.” 

Gansey had dropped him off back at St. Agnes in the late night after their latest Glendower-seeking adventure. 

“I’ll drive you,” Ronan said. 

Adam wasn’t sure if he meant to the factory or to Monmouth to pick up his bike, but neither option played out in reality. He would still need a way home at the end of his shift, and their was no way his conscious would allow him to ask for a favor as big as being picked up at 3am, and their wasn’t enough time to get to Monmouth and then the factory in time for his shift either by car or bike or some combination. 

His entire rib cage seemed to squeeze in. Why did the world have to be so heavy for Adam Parrish? He had rent to pay. A life to build. A job he had no way to get to and homework he had no time to finish. 

And now he couldn’t even breathe right. He couldn’t get enough air in his lungs. He pressed his forehead to the closed door, eyes screwed shut. 

There were warm hands on his shoulder, maneuvering around, away from the door, directing him to sitting on the bed. He was glad to be seated because he didn’t think his trembling limbs had much strength left in them. 

He gripped handfuls of the sheet with each hand and forced himself to take in a slow breath. He knew what a panic attack was, knew he was going through one, had been here before. He didn’t really need this on top of his already mess of a day. 

Once he had regained a modicom of composure, a phone was shoved under his face, into his line of vision. Ronan’s phone in Ronan’s hand. 

“Call out of work,” Ronan commanded. 

“I can’t,” Adam said, and he was usually more snappish about it, about Ronan and Gansey trying to act like the knew what was best for him, not understanding the carefully balanced realities of his life and how precarious they were. But tonight he was too worn out. “Rent’s due next week.”

“This is a church, loser,” Ronan said. “They’re not going to kick you out if you’re late on rent one time.” 

Ronan was chewing on his leather bracelets when Adam looked up at him. His phone was a sleek brick weighing in Adam’s palms as he had decisions to make. Sometimes he had forgotten St. Agnes had been Ronan’s home first. The place he had come to every Sunday, probably since childhood, probably also partaking in the potlucks, Sunday school classes, and seasonal outdoor festivals that Adam either saw from his window somedays or advertised on goldenrod sheets of paper tacked on the downstairs bulletin board. These people knew Ronan -- from before -- and he knew them and any assessment was built on knowledge of the inner workings of this church, not churches in general. 

Adam also thought of the perfectly calculated lowered rent. How he had accused Gansey, but how Ronan was the one who showed up for no reason but to be there, that sometimes gazed at Adam in a certain way. There were things that were maybe making more sense. 

“Alright,” he said “I’ll call out.” 

It was better than half-assing a night of work and half-assessing an essay. And maybe, perhaps, spending the evening with Ronan was an added benefit.

  
  


3

 

There had been a lot of strange people in Henrietta the last few months: assassins, hitmen, collectors, and members of crime syndicates. There to find the Greywaren, to bid on the demon, or search out some debt owed them. It wasn’t so hard to believe that one or more of them, spurned by Niall Lynch in the past, might find their way to his grave and make their displeasure known. 

Adam had wished he had thought about this before they had made the trip to the cemetery. Ronan had asked him, in his stilted way, to join him on this weekend visit. It was a fraught enough exercise with Ronan opening up a wound to him. Adam had a few days to prep, he should’ve been smart enough to scope out the location and make sure everything was fine, that everything would be alright when they arrived. 

He should’ve. He should’ve. He should’ve.

Ronan had turned to stone beside him, staring at the lurid, neon orange graffiti on the gravestone. 

Adam ached to come up with the right thing to say or the right thing to do, but this isn’t a situation he knew how to heal. 

“We can fix it,” Adam said. 

Ronan’s already stiff shoulders raise another inch, up under his ears. 

“This was a fucking stupid idea in the first place,” Ronan said, his first words since parking in the cementary’s lot. 

He turned and started back towards his car. Adam followed, half a step behind. 

 

They don’t talk about it because getting Ronan to talk about something he doesn’t want to talk about it is a two day fight at least. So he let Ronan go silent, sitting in one corner of Monmouth even though he was half moved back into the Barns already, while Adam sat in the other, reviewing his calculus notes and borrowing Gansey’s computer to look up how to get spray paint off stone. 

If there was one thing that Adam knew from being Ronan’s friend and now being his more-than-friend, is that he didn’t always have the right thing to say, but hand lotion, mixtapes, court cases, fists thrown. Ronan always knew the thing to do. 

 

“It’s like I lost him twice,” Ronan admitted, later, when they had moved from the main room of Monmouth into Ronan’s bedroom. It was like a renewed intimacy, allowed to be here, allowed to be close, sitting flush side-by-side against the pillows and headboard. 

“Him,” he continued. “And the idea of him.”

Adam didn’t have a modicum of similar experience to commiserate with. His parents were both alive and any disillusions he had about the type of people they were had been worn away when he had been very young. He never had the shock of growing up idolizing a father to only have it turning false. 

So Adam did what he could. He found Ronan’s hand with his own, interweaved their fingers, gave a squeeze, and said the only thing he had that Ronan would appreciate: 

“That fucking sucks.”

Ronan snorted, because laughing was easier than crying. He squeezed Adam’s hand back. 

 

“I’m driving,” Adam announced two days later, taking the bmw’s drivers seat. Ronan had finally managed to teach him to drive a passable stick transmission. Ronan got in the passenger’s seat with minimal huranging, but he wasn’t stupid and figured out where they were headed a few turns before they reached it. 

“Parrish,” Ronan growled between clenched teeth, but this resistance had been calculated in. 

“Just trust me,” Adam said. He thought he had earned that; Ronan ceasing vocal protests proved he thought so too. He parked in the cemetery lot. 

Ronan exited the car with zero prodding, stuffing his hands in his pockets as he hip-checked the door closed. Adam watched from over the roof as Ronan shored up his shoulders and started forward. Straight forward and unwavering like a soldier marching to assured slaughter.   

Adam walked fast to catch up, rolling the key ring over and over in his fingers as a discharge of anxious energy. Adam Parrish had always gotten A’s in his math classes, but people weren’t numbers and proofs. They were fragile, tangled, and contradictory messes, himself included. He sure hoped in this maneuver he had calculated right. 

Ronan stopped still a few feet in front of his father’s gravestone. 

“Parrish,” he said again, tight and caught in his throat. A different tone altogether. 

The gravestone had been scrubbed clean, and the weeds around it pulled, and a wreath of flowers that cost most of one of Adam’s paychecks had been leaned against it. Adam had seen to it. No one deserved to have their pain disrespected.

Adam stepped up even with Ronan. Ronan pointed to a grassy spot beside Niall’s headstone. “We’re going to get a headstone for Mom,” he said. “Put it there… Just because she was a dream doesn’t mean she shouldn’t be remembered.”

“Of course not,” Adam said. “You love her.”   

Ronan leaned into Adam, shoulder to shoulder, the heavy weight of him, trusting Adam to support it. 

 

4 

 

Ronan had been getting a lot of practice on answering his phone. It was what happened when your boyfriend and your best friend were no longer within the same county limits as you, but hundreds of miles away instead; you forced yourself to get over your issues for the sake of human interactions with your few favorite people. So when Adam called a month and a half into his freshman year, of course Ronan picked up without hesitation. 

“Hey, Parrish. What’s up?” He paced the length of the porch. It was humid autumn and their was just a cusp of daylight left on the edge of the evening horizon.

“Hey,” Adam replied, but his voice was waver-y and damp. 

“Who do I need to drive up there and punch?”

“No one,” Adam said. His voice was croaky and Ronan knew what that meant. “I just needed to hear your voice and know that… if I screw this all up I have somewhere to go back to.”

Ronan pressed his phone closer to his ear like that would make him closer to anything important: to Adam, to understanding. 

“Alright, Parrish, tell me what the fuck is going on?”

“...I can’t do this.”

Ronan heart skipped a damn beat. “This?”

“College,” Adam said. “Ivy League. What was I thinking? That if I was smart enough I would fit in here? It’s all the same bullshit as Aglionby, and I’m not smart enough either.”

“I’m calling bullshit.” Ronan stopped, leaned against the rail. “Because I don’t know anyone smarter than you and I know Gansey.”

Adam laughed, a little bubble popping, but it changed jackshit. 

“I hate it here,” he said, “I don’t have any friends.” In a different situation, one that was light-hearted and Ronan had the full range to be a jerk, be might’ve replied, ‘I don’t know why that’s bothering you now.’ 

Instead, he channels his mother when she sent him off to school for the first time when all he wanted to do was stay home with his brothers and his animals. “You’ll make new friends.”

It sounded strange and utterly sentimental in his mouth, but he meant it. Parrish might have this idea in his head of himself being charmless and unlikeable, but Ronan knew for a fact he was very likeable. Likeable in that substantial way. Maybe not popular. Not a social butterfly. But loyal and hardworking and determined. There had to be other losers at that school just as nerdy as Parrish. If there wasn’t a single person who wanted to be his friend, Ronan didn’t know what was wrong with this damn world. 

Over the phone there was a rustle of a big, measured, drawn in breath. The type of breath you took when you were trying to control your emotions. Ronan ground the knuckles of a curled fist onto the porch railing. He felt a splinter catch but he didn’t care.

“I can’t do this,” Adam said, his voice cracking. “I don’t know who I was trying to convince, but I wasn’t meant for this life. I’m not good enough --”  

“Just shut up for a goddamn second,” Ronan said. “Because you’re starting to piss me off.”

“What?” Adam said, a little choked on equal amounts of shock and returned anger.

“I don’t like you talking bad about my boyfriend.” 

Adam made a tiny little noise, like a scoff. 

“Because I know,” Ronan said. “For motherfucking fact that he has faced some scarier shit than snooty trust fund assholes and fucking tweed-wearing professors. He’s brilliant, he’s stubborn, and as much as I miss him, he absolutely deserves to be there. I know that. He knows that. And that’s all their fucking is to it.” 

The line was quiet when immediately after Ronan stopped talking.   
“I… I’ve never been given such an angry pep talk before,” Adam said. “Which is surprising because I known you for so long.” 

Ronan’s fist on the rail unwined. A storm had passed. Now they were left with the drizzle

They spoke normally for a while after that instead of in hyperbole. About homesickness. About how the future looked glossy but was harder when you got there. About the countdown of days until they saw each other again. About how it was okay to wallow in your misery for a while, but then you needed to step up, step out, and get your shit together.

 

+1

 

The rain outside was falling like a sheet. 

“They say it’s good luck,” Adam said. 

“Doesn’t fucking feel like it,” Ronan replied. 

The stood just inside the front door left wide open. It was mid-summer, so the day was muggy and warm if equally gray and wet. Opal was running in loop-de-loops outside on the lawn, screaming and jumping in puddles formed in the dips, thoroughly enjoying herself while all the adults (and semi-adults if counting Matthew) were all waiting in different rooms inside of the Lynch farmhouse.  

“Doesn’t look like it’s supposed to clear up any time soon,” said Declan, interrupting the moment by walking through the entry hall, eyes on his phone screen. He was gone, passed through to another room, a moment later.

“What do you want to do?” Adam asked, looking askance at the man standing beside him. “It’s not exactly like we can have a rain check.”

They had gathered their friends and family from disparate parts of the world for this singular weekend. Declan from DC, Matthew from his California college, and the trio of Gansey, Blue, and Henry from the middle of their South American tour. They had already crammed in reunions, a bachelor party, and unplanned, overly emotional drunken speeches. Some of which were from surprising sources, because everyone had expected it from Gansey, but Declan had made a wildcard appearance. 

“We should just do it,” Ronan said. 

“Inside?” Adam asked. 

“No,” Ronan said. He nodded out the open doorway where the rain was still persistently heavy, but at least it wasn’t thundering. Out there, where it couldn’t be seen from the house, was -- past the lawn, in the forest, in a clearing -- a set of chairs and an arbor were arranged, awaiting them. 

“Outside,” Adam stated, a little stunned, because when he laid in bed last night, and the night before, and every night since they had come up with this plan, this wasn’t the way he had imagined it. He had imagined sunlight and perfection, but there was no accounting for the unaccountable. 

He had to admit Ronan looked rather distinguished standing there in his black button down, a slant of a grin on his face. No tie of course, and with the first two buttons undone. The collar framed his neck and it laid over the shape of his shoulder quiet nicely. Adam was wearing a suit, because he had bought it with his own money and he was going to wear it, goddamn it. 

What was the type of perfect that mattered though? Weather? Or the man beside him and the friends -- found family -- gathered here today for this? 

“I’m not going to let something as pathetic as fucking rain to stop my wedding,” Ronan said. He was full out grinning now.  

Adam grinned back, feeling full of champagne bubbles. “Let’s do it.” 

Ronan called back into the depth of the house, “How many umbrellas do we have in this place?”

  
  


After some explaining and eye rolling and umbrella hunting in the closets, the lot of them made a march out into the woods. The umbrellas gave minimal protection given the soggy ground and the diagonally blowing rain. But when Ronan was standing across from Adam, holding his hands as Gansey officiated, it didn't matter that they were getting soaked through and they'd probably have colds for the first days of their honeymoon.

All that mattered was Adam standing across from him, hair plastered to his forehead, one lock curled down the center and a droplet of water cutting across the bridge of his nose. 

Ronan used to think of love in terms of miles per hour and revving engines. Now he thought of if like the earth. The solid thing beneath his feet. The top soil and sentiment that with the proper attending could make something grow. What he had, what he planned to have forever, with Adam was that earth.

And so he married Adam Parrish, outside, under the rain, with his family -- blood and found -- serving as witness. When the time was called for the first kiss the umbrellas had already been discarded as useless and the cheering was matched with puddle jumping, and all he could conclude was that only this seemed right, and anything else -- sunshine no less -- would’ve been wrong. 

Perhaps rain was good luck afterall.   


End file.
